The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [206]
He took his hands away from his head and tried to look at them. "I am illiterate in many languages," he told them. "I have learned to speak Arabic and Amharic and K’San, but not to read them. French is the only language I read but do not speak. It is very different in its spoken form, yes?" The light was too much. He closed his eyes again. "When I tried to make Marc eat, he would say, ’Ill son, less and sawn.’ Something like that. I should have recognized it..."
"Ils sont les innocents." It was Giuliani’s voice. "It is hard to think the unthinkable. They were offering you the meat of the innocents."
Emilio was trembling badly now. "Yes. Later, I myself saw what— Nothing was wasted. Ed?" He managed to hold on until Brother Edward got him to the lavatory, and when the sickness passed, Ed replaced the vomited Prograine with an injected dose. He had no idea who took him to his room but before he fell asleep, he said, "I dream of it sometimes."
Johannes Voelker, the beads of a rosary passing through his fingers, was with him when he awoke. "I am sorry," he said.
IT WAS TWO days before Sandoz was able to continue. "You told us that you believed you were being brought by the military to the capital city," Giuliani began. "I take it you did not reach—" He consulted his notes. "Inbrokar."
"No. Supaari told me later that he arrived at Kashan about two days after the massacre. He attended to matters there and then came after Marc and me. He had to guess at the route, I suppose. I think we were on the march for perhaps two weeks before he caught up with us. This period of time was very confused. And we were not functioning well. I tried to get Marc to eat. I— He was not able to do this. After a while I gave up."
"But you ate the meat," John said. "After you knew."
"Yes." Emilio stopped, searching for some way to explain. "There was a time in the British military when it was possible to punish a man with as many as eight hundred lashes. Have you read of such things? Some men actually survived this, and they reported that after a time, they no longer felt any pain. They felt only a sort of hammering. It was like that, in my soul. Do you understand? To watch the children killed, to eat the meat. After a time, it felt only like hammering." He shrugged. They were trying, but he knew they couldn’t imagine it. "Anyway, Supaari caught up to the patrol. By the time he found us, Marc was very weak. I think the commander would have killed him soon. He was slowing them up." There had been no emotion when he saw Supaari. He and Marc simply sat on the ground, too tired to think or hope or pray. Even with the meat, he was exhausted. He knew he couldn’t keep Marc on his feet much longer, that he was close to collapse himself. "I think Supaari bribed the commander. There was a long discussion. It was in a language I didn’t know."
"So Supaari took you back to Kashan?" John prompted, when the silence went on too long.
Sandoz roused himself. "No. I don’t know that we’d have been welcome there. He took us to Gayjur. To his own compound. I never saw Kashan again."
"Based on Father Robichaux’s descriptions of his time in that city, you would have been relatively safe there, as long as you kept out of sight," the Father General said. "Or perhaps I am wrong?"
"I believe Supaari originally meant it to be safe for us. He may not have been clear